One of her first successes was to convince the owner of Sydney’s largest brothel, the Nevada, that he’d go bust unless he insisted on condom use. “I told him, ‘I can help you have the boomingest business in town. But you have to be brave.’” She got him a double-page spread in that weekend’s paper, and over the next four years condom use in the city’s brothels climbed from just over 10 per cent to an estimated 90 per cent.

University policies should instead aim to minimise harmful effects rather than simply condemn and prohibit them. This is important, because hard-line prohibitionist policies increase stigma and discourage engagement with support services.

Let’s hold each other a bit tighter today. Love up on each other a bit more. Let’s set aside our judgments of each other for a moment. Because tomorrow we’ll lose another member of our community and they’ll take with them the chance to be seen. Not celebritized, but seen. And that’s all we really want. Right?

…the harm reduction approach for me was always easy to understand: treating people with dignity and respect; valuing the lived experience of peers; believing no one should have their lives or health put at risk – or go to prison – simply because of the drugs they chose to use; fighting stigma and discrimination, and the laws and policies that drive them; recognising the pernicious relationship between drug laws and racism, sexism, poverty, homophobia, colonisation and other societal evils. – Rick Lines

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The people behind this site

Nigel Brunsdon

Nigel’s day job is being the Community Manager at HIT, he also runs the injectingadvice.com website and a number of other online harm reduction projects. In his spare time he can be found hiding behind a camera.

Craig Harvey

Craig is a committed harm reductionist, having worked primarily with people who inject drugs for two decades, both in the United Kingdom and Australia. A surfer, climber and wannabe novelist, he sometimes takes photographs too.